IL -$42/ 



.?? 



9 



k Mt 









f 



\t UddHTid^^dd-j^i- 



THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE, 



AN ADDRESS 



DELIVERED AT 



Wellesley College, 



BY 



Rev. NOAH PORTER, D.D., LL.D. 




THE SEW 

NORMAL COLLEGE 

AT WELLESL 




y^^y- 



THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE 



AN ADDRESS 



DELIVERED AT 



Wellesley College, 

BY 

Rev. NOAH PORTER, D.D., LL.D., 

is/i:£l:s^ ^'vtix, 18BO, 

AT THE 

Laying of the Corner-Stone of Stone Hall. 



Boston: 

Frank Wood, Printer, 352 Washington St. 
1880. 









^5^/ 



Mrs. Stone's Gift, 



By the decease of her husband, Mr. Daniel P. Stone, of Maiden, 
Mass., Aug. 14, 1878, Mrs. Valeria G. Stone came into possession of 
an estate amounting to about two millions of dollars. 

Recognizing herself as the servant of Him to whom the silver 
and the gold belong, she began at once to inquire for the wisest 
modes of using, in the promotion of human good and the upbuilding 
of the Redeemer's cause, the large property which the affectionate 
confidence of her husband had committed to her disposal. She 
-called to her side a relative in whose judgment she confided, and 
asked his counsel and advice. In accordance with suggestions made 
she decided to devote a large part of her inheritance to the work 
of Christian education; and various colleges and seminaries in 
different parts of our land were selected as worthy recipients of 
her aid. 

Among these she was especially interested in Wellesley College, 
as an institution for the best training of her own sex, not merely in 
mental culture, but also in' Christian character. Learning that the 
rapid growth of the College had made an additional building 
necessary for its largest success, she appropriated the sum of 
$100,000 for the construction and furnishing of such a building. 



The work was soon began, and by the latter part of May in the^ 
present year, was sufficiently advanced for the formal laying of the- 
corner-stone. 

The public exercises at the laying of the corner-stone were 
held on the 27th of May, 1880, in the Chapel of Wellesley College. 

The services commenced with prayer, offered by Rev. P. A. 
Chadbourne, President of Williams College. Rev. Bradford K. 
Peirce, of Boston, read the Scripture lesson. The Bible used was 
a copy of the ''Vulgate," dated in 1544, once owned and used by 
Philip Melancthon. This valuable memento of the great reformer, 
enriched by his autograph notes, had been lately presented to the 
College, to be used on this occasion. 

Rev. William H. Willcox, as the representative of Mrs. Stone,, 
then read the 

DEED OF GIFT FROM MRS. STONE. 

Whereas my late husband, Daniel Perkins Stone, of Maiden, Mass.,. 
was pleased to express his affection and confidence in me by committing 
to my disposal the large fortune he had accumulated, it is my desire, as a 
servant of the Lord Jesus Christ, to devote a portion of this inheritance to 
the higher and distinctively Christian education of my own sex. I have 
therefore selected Wellesley College as a most worthy recipient, and set 
apart the sum of One Hundred Thousand Dollars for erecting and furnish- 
ing an additional building for the use of this institution. I desire that, in 
honor of my deceased husband, it shall bear the name of "Stone Hall." 
What its special use at any particular time shall be the Trustees of the 
College may determine, as the needs of the institution shall seem to 
require ; but whatever it may be, I wish the building to be always regarded 
and used as one that has been sacredly consecrated to the promotion of 
a truly Christian education and the development of Christian character 
and life. 



5 

It is my hope and prayer that the young ladies who in the coming 
_jears may enjoy the benefits of " Stone Hall," may learn, as the most im- 
portant of all lessons, to become noble Christian women, and devote their 
powers and their attainments to earnest lives of Christian usefulness. I 
have often and sadly observed the pitiable worthlessness, both to them- 
selves and others, of the lives of women when given up to selfish frivolity, 
or wasted in the pursuit of mere personal enjoyment. And often, too, have 
I noted, with admiration and gratitude to God, the saintly beauty and benefi- 
cent power of the lives of truly Christian women whose learning has been 
too genuine for skeptical conceit, and whose refinement has been too thor- 
ough for fastidious selfishness ; but whose highest aim has been simply to 
do, faithfully and cheerfully, the work which God, in his providence, had 
assigned them, wherever and whatever it might be. Such are the women 
whom, for their own sake and the world's, I most earnestly desire to aid in 
training, — women who will always regard a symmetrical Christian character 
as the most radiant crown of womanhood, and a life spent in humble imita- 
tion of Him who "came not to be ministered unto but to minister," as the 
noblest of all aims. 

With this expression of my wish and prayer, and with the earnest hope 
that these views may always find active sympathy in those to whom the 
work of instruction in Wellesley College shall be intrusted, I hereby, with 
.gratitude to God for the power and the opportunity, commit to the 
Trustees "Stone Hall," erected and furnished, as a sacred trust, to be 
held and used by them for the purpose indicated — the Christian education 
of women for their more efficient service of the world and of God. 



VALERIA G. STONE. 



Signed and sealed in the 
presence of Wm. H. Will cox 



■} 



The following hymn, written for the occasion by Rev. S. F* 
Smith, author of ''America," was then sung by the Choir of the Eliot 
Church, of Newton : — 

FOUNDED ON CHRIST. 

Founded on Christ, — this placid lake, 

This glorious garniture of hills, 
Yearns a new offering to make 

To him, whose praise creation fills. 

Founded on Christ, — then strong and fair 

Turret and battlement shall rise; 
Kissed by the sweet, ti^nsparent air, 

And canopied by azure skies. 

Founded on Christ, — his love shall gild 

The advancing work with matchless grace, 
And learning's willing hands shall build 

A temple sacred to his praise. 

As sunset clouds, in glory dressed, 

Gather to form night's regal throne. 
And the red sun behind the west. 

Lights up the splendor all its own, — • 

So in each deed our hands have wrought, 

Beams forth His glory, his, alone ; 
So be each work, and plan, and thought 

Founded on" Christ, our corner-stone. 

Rev. Mark Hopkins, ex-president of Williams College, offered 
prayer ; after which President Porter, of Yale College, who is also 
President of the Board of Trustees of Wellesley College, delivered 
the address. After the conclusion of President Porter's address 
the company repaired to the site of Stone Hall. Mr. Willcox 
placed a Bible in the corner-stone, and then laid it in due form. 
The public proceedings closed with prayer by President Chadbourne. 



ADDRESS 



Wellesley College was founded avowedly as a Christian college. All 
its endowments and arrangements have been inspired and controlled by the 
definite purpose that the education imparted here should be emphatically 
Christian. While its plan proposed that in scientific knowledge and literary 
culture it should be behind no other college of its kind, and that art should 
do its utmost to lend grace and beauty to science and letters, it also pro- 
vided that Christ should be supremely recognized as the example and inspi- 
ration of all human excellence — as the guide of the present, and the hope 
of the future, fife — as the Redeemer and Lord of each individual soul and 
of the human race. 

As it is now to be enlarged in its proportions, perhaps toward the ideal 
of a university, it is as distinctly understood that this ideal will remain 
as positively Christian as at first. 

It is no new thing in this country that colleges, and universities should 
be founded upon this theory. All the older colleges were originally estab- 
lished in the interest of Christianity and the Church, the Church being 
conceived as providing for every interest and relation of human society. 
Most of our recent higher institutions, with a few notable and well-known 
exceptions, have been founded in a similar spirit. 

In the older countries the same, till of late, has been emphatically true. 
Within a few years, however, both in the old countries and the new, another 



theory has found many advocates, and been embodied in a few colleges and 
universities. This theory, which may be called the secular, as contrasted 
with the Christian, is briefly this : — 

" Education of every grade, and preeminently of the highest, to be con- 
summate, must be free from all alliances with religion. It must forswear any 
allegiance to the Christian creed, and dispense with positive Christian influ- 
ences. While it may accept the fruits of Christian civilization, so far as 
Science and Letters, Art and Culture, Law and Morality have taken these 
into the general life, it will best do its appropriate work, and even best serve 
Christianity itself, if it leaves all positive Christian teaching and training to 
the household and the Church." 

I propose at this time to explain and defend the old theory as contrasted 
with the new — the theory on which this College stands, and which it pro- 
poses to exemplify. 

I must assume, first of all, that Christianity is true as a history ; that it 
is supernatural in its import; that it is of supreme importance to every 
individual man and the human race, and that to both, Christ, in his life, his 
death and his advancing kingdom, is to become more a manifested neces- 
sity and a conspicuous power, till what seems the brilliant romances of 
prophecy shall become the sober facts of history. The man who believes 
all this of Christianity and of Christ, would seem to be compelled to believe 
that in the progress of society towards this consummation, the appliances 
of education must inevitably be molded more completely and confessedly 
by the power of Him who shall subdue all things to himself. 

On the other hand, the reasoner who holds that the Christian history is 
largely fabulous or exaggerated, and that the supernatural in it is impossible, 
must conclude that the morning-star which ushered in its dawn must give 
way before the risen sun of science and culture. The man who half 
believes, or who even surmises, that positive Christianity cannot stand before 
modern science and modern criticism, must conclude that Christianit}^ 
ought to have little prominence in that education which will very soon 
permit it to have no place in scientific belief All those who hold these 
views, either as misgivings or conclusions, are thoroughly consistent in 



excluding Christianity from every college and university, or in providing for 
its gradual and decorous retreat with appropriate honors. 

It is, then, of prime importance that every one who discusses the 
question before us should, first of all, settle the question whether and in 
what sense he holds to the supremacy and permanence of Christianity. 
With those who deny or half believe that Christianity is supernatural and 
permanent, we can hold no argument, for they have already decided the 
question at issue. We can only address ourselves to those who believe in 
Christianity as permanent and 'divine, but yet honestly question whether, 
in the present condition of our higher schools of learning and of Christianity 
itself, it is either wise or practicable any longer to make these schools 
distinctively and earnestly Christian. 

I have spoken of my topic as a question, and the discussion of it as 
an argument, and, it may be, a criticism or a refutation of dissentient or 
opposing views. I do not, however, propose to make this discussion con- 
troversial, or even critical. I would rather seek to portray, in positive 
form, the ideal Christian college in its aims, and the conditions of their 
realization. Should this ideal portraiture bring out, by contrast, the defects 
and limitations of those institutions which approach nearest to this ideal, 
the portraiture may be none the less salutary and inspiring. I shall aim, 
however, to show, also, that this ideal ought to be made real. It is the 
glory of Christianity that it presents the noblest of ideals. It is none the 
less its glory that it inspires men with courage and self-sacrifice to turn 
these ideals into facts. 

I observe, i. That the ideal Christian college should continue and sup- 
plement the functions of the family and the Church. If the family and the 
Church should be Christian, the college, for similar reasons, should also be 
Christian, Christianity presupposes the family and the Church. It finds 
men with a home and a temple of some sort. It roots itself in the one, 
and expands itself within the other, purifying and elevating both. While it 
addresses man as an individual, it presupposes that he draws much of his 
life from his social relations. Society implies letters and laws and manners 
and morals; religion, that God is manifested through nature, and, perhaps, 



lO 

in history. Society and religion presuppose schools — which can do more 
than home or neighborhood in teaching language and history, science and 
art. The Church, in its way, is also a school, in which religious truth 
is defended, explained and apphed to the duties of this life and the hopes 
of the next. Had there been no patriarchs, no lawgivers, no scribes, no 
schools of the prophets, no synagogues, there had been no Christ, no 
cross and no redemption. 

The college trains and teaches the young on a still higher scale than 
the family or the Church. If the elementary instruction of the lower 
should be positively Christian, why should not that of the higher? Look- 
ing at this question from a Christian standpoint we can give but one answer: 
the school of the highest grade should be emphatically and positively 
Christian. That it should be wisely Christian need not be suggested; 
that it should not undo by overdoing is self-evident; but that Christian 
aims should animate and control its life is equally manifest. That the 
realization of these aims involves peculiar difficulties we do not deny; that 
it may call for special sagacity is very likely ; that it may provoke many 
conflicts about reason and faith, and right and wrong in conduct and char- 
acter, is not only probable, but certain. Similar difficulties occur in the 
family, the dame school and the Church ; but that Christianity should 
found colleges, and seek to animate them with its fundamental faiths 
and its spirit, seems' at first as natural and necessary as that it should seek 
to animate the family and the Church with its truth and its life. 

As we have already seen, the influence of the one is but a prolonga- 
tion of the influence of the others. To the college student and the scholar, 
the story of the Gospels that has been read in the home or heard at the 
church, must take its place as true or false in the long rolls of general 
history which every student must learn to accept or reject with some meas- 
ure of instructed judgment. The speculative conceptions of God, of duty 
and immortality, of government, law and religion, of the origination of the 
earth and the spirit of man, which the educated men must formally accept 
or reject, are necessarily theistic or atheistic. They must be consistent or 
inconsistent with the Christian creed. The practical principles, the theory 



II 

of manners and of morals which the student more or less intelligently 
receives or rejects as the living springs of his own moral life, must be 
sharply Christian or non-Christian, or as many-shaded and as inconstant 
as the hues of the chameleon, which is colored by what it chances to 
feed on. 

We confess that we cannot understand the logic or the practical 
wisdom of those who admit the propriety and necessity of positive Christian 
influences in the home and seminary, but would omit or exclude them from 
the college. The reason which they give is that the pupil is no longer a 
child, and, therefore, should be treated as a man. It is true he is no 
longer a child, and, perhaps, not yet a youth ; but neither in character nor in 
convictions has he become a man. Moreover, just at this period of life, of 
all others, he is doomed to pass through that fermenting and transition period 
in which he must form for himself his practical convictions and his theoret- 
ical judgments in the light of independent thought. It may be that less can 
be done in a formal way for either at this time than at any other. It may 
be, and doubtless is, true, that officious and ill-timed intermeddHng will do 
more harm than good; and yet, for all that, there is no time or condition 
of life in which wise Christian influences are more needed or are more 
effective than when the spontaneous impulses of childhood and youth are 
confirmed or rejected by distinct acts of intelligent volition — the judgments 
of the growing man. The moment the youth enters a college, he finds 
himself in a new atmosphere. Even if the pupil lodges and eats at his 
own home, the public opinion of the college will yet penetrate into his 
chamber with its pervasive and stimulating atmosphere. This is trebly 
true if his own home is exchanged for a home within the college, charged, 
as this always is, with the electric force of young and buoyant life. It may 
be that often the teacher is impotent to use any direct moral or religious 
influence. We know very well that he may often overdo, by ill-timed zeal 
and injudicious obtrusiveness, and that, in contrast with misdirected speech, 
silence is indeed golden. But we know, as well, that if the teacher's own 
character is elevated and refined by Christian earnestness, a single word 
or sentiment that breaks this golden silence will go further to confirm the 



12 



halting faith or to rekindle the smouldering fervor than a sermon from 
any preacher or a homily from any exhorter ; or, unhappily, ,a contemptuous 
word or sarcastic utterance may rend the feeble fabric of a failing faith, 
and poison the heart with distrust or scorn of what is noble and good. 
The teacher who is worthy of the name can reach the inner life of his pupil 
by what he says and does, as no other person can. He can strengthen 
and renew the springs of that life, sometimes, by a look or a word, just as it 
takes that second adjustment which shall be final. 

This is not all. During his college and university life the pupil must, at 
least, begin the critical revisal of his religious and philosophical creed in the 
light of all that science and history and philosophy and criticism can say 
in their latest discoveries and reports. To the searching brightness of 
these blazing lights the pupil must bring all that he has hitherto received 
without question. Into this fusing crucible he must cast all his traditionary 
faiths, to receive them back as they shall leap forth in purer metal and 
brighter luster, or to reject them as worthless dross or base alloy. He 
cannot hold back these faiths from this fiery trial, though rooted in the convic- 
tions of his father and hallowed by the love and prayers of his mother, and 
made sacred by the aspirations and vows of his youth. He ought not to 
desire to do so. It is better that they should be reviewed and revised by 
the fight of his maturing judgment. To withdraw them from this light 
would dwarf his intellect and enfeeble his convictions. It would open a 
widening and deepening chasm between his practical and intellectual life. 
It would dishonor Truth, which will not submit to be divided. This process 
of adjustment must and ought to go on. While it is proceeding, the college 
or university becomes, of necessity, the church, and the teachers and asso- 
ciates are, for the time being, priests and oracles ; for it is in the light of 
what these attest and prove that the old creed is reaffirmed or questioned 
or renounced. And what if this church has no religion and the priests have 
no consecration? What, again, if they are thoroughly and unaffectedly 
Christian ? In these times of crisis — and they are always present — a word 
or look from the living teacher; a chance remark in the one direction or 
the other ; an earnest and candid spirit, or a scoffing and dogmatic doubt, 



13 

or the combined impression of his intellectual temper and personal spirit, — 
have, in thousands of instances, been fraught with bane or blessing to his 
confiding pupils. Of many, in this crisis of their spiritual history, it might 
be said that so far as human counsel and help can come at all in this 
critical and transition period, they must come through those intellectual 
activities which are the absorbing and controlling element of the 
student's life. 

2. Christianity needs the college, to improve its own spiritual quality and 
enlarge its attractiveness and power. For this reason the Christian college 
is an essential appendage to the Church, and, therefore, ought to be emphati- 
cally Christian. It is now more generally conceded than formerly, that 
education and culture are essential to furnish armor for the defense of the 
Church and weapons for its advancement. It is not so clearly recognized 
as it ought to be that both are required for the development of its own 
varied and highest perfections. While it is granted by all that a certain 
measure of each is required for the existence and growth of the kingdom of 
God, it is at the same time feared by many that too much of either will 
bring hindrance, rather than help, to the strength and beauty of the Chris- 
tian character. We hold the contrary. Knowledge does, indeed, bring 
its temptations as truly as ignorance. Culture may hinder Christlikeness 
as certainly as squalor; but knowledge and culture, in their highest perfec- 
tion, are needed for the complete manifestation of what Christianity can do 
for man. We say nothing, here, of the moral and spiritual conditions of 
the Christian life; we concede and contend that these are indispensable; 
that it is only the docile child, whether he be a peasant or a philosopher, 
who can enter — much more, who is the greatest — in the kingdom of 
heaven. But we also know that the import of the kingdom of heaven, 
in its inner spirit and its external manifestations, can only be comprehended 
in its full significance by the most enlarged and best-instructed mind, or 
appreciated by the most refined and cultured soul. This ideal will never 
be perfectly understood and exemplified until the results of science and 
culture shall have been appHed to all the forms of individual morals and 
manners, and in all those agencies which Christian ethics and social 



14 

science shall mature and put in force. To such a consummation the 
Christian college is as necessary as Christian preaching ; the university 
as the Sunday School; the conscientious culture of science, literature and 
art as the prayer-meeting and the Bible-reader. It will not be till every 
thought is subjected to the obedience of Christ, that the tabernacle of God 
shall, indeed, be with men. The author of the work entitled "Modern 
Christianity a Civilized Heathenism," betrays, by its title, his own narrow 
and squalid conceptions of the kingdom of God. The book is as vulgar 
and narrow as its title is unchristian, and never could have been conceived 
or respected except in a low condition of Christian enlightenment. 

How sorely our practical Christianity needs to be elevated above such 
narrow and vulgar, not to say squalid, conceptions of many of its advocates 
and representatives, one hardly need suggest. We are forced to confess 
that with all that is noble and Christlike in its spirit, much remains that 
is hateful in its manners and its morals. See the Church forgetting that 
it should be militant only against its foes, and behaving itself so often 
like a termagant in the houses of its friends! Think of the sectarianism 
which is its scandal and shame, of which almost every village, from the 
oldest to the newest, gives visible tokens in its rival houses of worship, that 
also betoken the hateful jealousies of their adherents! Think, also, of its 
hard and scholastic statements of doctrine; of its narrow judgments of 
character; of its scrimping parsimony in some directions and criminal luxury 
in others; of the tenacity with which it adheres to old errors, and the 
credulity with which it runs after the last sensationalism ! And all this while 
how heedless is it of the pure and spiritual example of the patient Christ, 
who can only say, " Ye know not of what spirit ye are!'' Meanwhile, the 
plaintive cry of distress now and then rises into the shriek of alarm — 
" When the Sonof inan coDieth shall he find faith on the earth / " And, worst 
of all, in high places and low, in the lanes and avenues of the cities, in 
the streets and lurking-places of the villages, glaring frauds and brutal 
crime suggest the question, " Has cofiscience, too, with faith in God, left 
the soul of man? " 

Do you ask. What might Christian culture do for our individual and 



15 

public morals and economies, were it rightly enforced in our colleges, and 
spread from them through our social life ? We reply, first, It should give 
us correct and worthy conceptions of Christianity as an historic phenom- 
enon. It should so effectually arouse the historic sense and quicken the 
historic imagination, that among all the heroes of the earth Christ should 
be visibly transfigured, high and lifted up ; and not only Moses and Elias 
should be there with the well-known three, but Gautama and Plato and 
Marcus Aurelius should also bow, with wonder and worship, and say, "// is 
good for us to be hereV This historic Christ, being seen in his true place 
and correct proportions, would be worshiped as the supernatural Christ, 
for the reason that the philosophy to which Christian culture and science 
would train, would recognize a personal and living God as a speculative 
necessity ; a;nd such a theism would find no contradiction between his im- 
manent direction of those laws of nature which he conserves, and those 
manifestations of his presence which flash forth when he breaks the 
circuit and makes himself felt in creation or miracle, or in the gentler 
methods of that providence which answers trust and prayer. Such a 
theory of history and of God would find it easy to accept the historic 
Christ, when seen in the light of his finished work, to be none other 
than God manifest in the flesh. Such a manifestation would necessarily 
suppose some need which it was designed to meet, and some import which 
meets it fully. Such a statement of import and need involves a creed 
which will be more or less sharp according to the capacity of men to dis- 
tinguish and define ; and more or less varied and flexible according to the 
changes of philosophy and language. In this way an enlightened Christianity 
would be doctrinal, because it is a rational Christianity, and must connect it§ 
Christian truths with those underlying principles with which human specu- 
lation has always concerned itself. But it would not be rationalistic in the 
offensive sense of the term, because it is too enlightened not to recognize 
the limits of human logic and the authority of testimony and faith, especially 
when personality and the supernatural are concerned. It would not and 
could not be dogmatic, however, in the scholastic sense, for it could not fail 
to remember that the chief value of doctrine is to reveal and emphasize 



i6 

the personal Christ, and that abstract formulae take feeble hold of the 
feelings and the life. 

But all the studies of the enlightened scholar would enforce the one truth 
that Christianity is a great practical power, and that in this lies its chief 
interest in the past and for the future. In the light of this absorbing and 
overwhelming relation he finds little interest in it as a subject of curious 
and critical detail, or of metaphysical hair-splitting and fiery controversy. 
He cares for it most of all, because it is destined for use, and inquires 
how its energies may be largely increased and its capacities may be most 
successfully applied. Hence, an intelligent and instructed Christianity 
must be evangelistic and missionary in its spirit. It cannot but go out 
into the highways and hedges; it must devise missions of all sorts to the 
poor and neglected at home — to the idolatrous and superstitious across 
the seas. There prevails at present a strong tendency to believe that 
success in evangelistic work is reserved for men of limited reading and 
ordinary associations, because their hearts and minds are supposed to be 
nearer to those of the people. Facts by no means justify this conclusion. 
Christian history testifies most abundantly that evangelistic and missionary 
zeal have been kindled and renewed nowhere so constantly as in Chris- 
tian colleges, and that men trained in the universities have found a 
most efficient preparation in classical and scientific study for using plain 
speech and popular illustrations with the greatest effect among both pagan 
and Christian heathens. The annals of English and American colleges 
abound with the names of men — some of their brightest — who have been 
thus distinguished. Many a thoughtful scholar, while studying the history 
of the Church and meditating on the needs of men, has heard the ques- 
tion addressed to himself, " Whom shall I send^ and who will go for us? '^ 
and has responded, with trembling yet confident voice, " Here am I; send 
me^ An instructed Christianity cannot but be practical ; and a practical 
Christianity must be evangelistic and missionary in its spirit. 

An instructed Christianity must also be catholic and unsectarian. 
The Christian college, almost of necessity, trains its pupils to enlarged and 
liberal views of things non-essential, and to a catholic appreciation of 



17 

things that are common. Narrowness of views tends to the exaggeration 
of things that are less important, and the over-valuation of Hmited interests. 
As the student follows the great movements of the hosts of God's chosen 
in the past, their minor subdivisions are lost sight of in the movements 
of the mass ; their variously colored banners seem to blend into one 
cloud of prismatic light ; while the separate watchword of each division 
swells into one harmonious w^ar-cry of courage and victory. Under the 
enlightened judgment which a liberal training fosters, an uncatholic spirit 
is impossible. It does not suffice to assert that some colleges which have 
called themselves Christian have been the last hiding-places of bigotry 
and the inveterate nurseries of sectarianism. Such institutions are not 
usually eminently Christian, or eminent for liberal science or culture. 

For the future application of Christianity to public and private 
economics — that department which must soon be occupied, and ought to 
be directed by the Christian Church — we must look to the higher schools 
of learning for the improvement of the aims and quality of our Christian 
activity. These schools should be the first to call the attention of the 
community to its duties and opportunities in every sphere of political and 
social life. An atheistic sociology may go before us with its narrower 
vision and its emphatic affirmations of those conclusions which experience 
has estabhshed, but it will do scant justice to the higher elements in human 
nature, and can recognize no beneficent Providence. Consequently its 
theories must be untrustworthy if not erroneous. In motives to action and 
hope it cannot compare with the system which believes in a future king- 
dom of God that shall be built up under the guidance of an Almighty power, 
and shall be neither more nor less than a human society transformed^ by 
means of social agencies, into a tabernacle in which God shall, indeed, dwell 
with nlen and wipe away all tears from all eyes. 

3. On the other hand, the college should be Christian in order to 
elevate and improve the quality of our science and culture. We have seen 
that Christianity owes much to both. We proceed to show that they owe 
much to Christianity. Christianity, /. e., Christian education, enlarges and 
elevates science, while it inspires and refines culture. We are so accustomed 



I8 

to talk of science and culture as' separate agerrcfes, tlia^t we forget ths^rtHej 
only represent the theories and coevictions^ the aspirations and imagiinative- 
power of living man.. We insensiMy conceive of theiH'. as natural agents or 
cosmic forces acting under impersonal laws.. The very current lase of 
such phrases as the time-spirit, the laws of progress, evolution and devel- 
opment, tends to deepen this impression. Thie necessary filiation of all 
scientific thinking which is occasioned by the limitatiosns of the activity of 
a single individual and a single age, together with the unchanging nature 
of the laws under which men classify and reason, confirm these ways of 
thinking. The new theories of materialistic and metaphysical develop- 
ment which sink the individual soul into an aggregate of material particles, 
and sublimate God into a metaphysical formula, carry with them the 
conclusion that science and culture have a self-moving force which is 
independent of personal activity or emotion, and, of course, is unaffected 
by religious belief or inspiration. The actual history of science and 
culture is a refutation of these conceptions. Both are the workmanship 
of living men, the joint products of their individual freedom, and of the 
education and opportunities of the men who went before and who lived 
with them. The result is, truth and beauty as reflected in the individual 
minds, and accepted by the consenting and approving generations, of 
individual souls. But what the individual soul shall be is determined very 
largely by its religious creed and aspirations. 

A few examples may suffice to show what we mean, and to confirm its 
truth. The speculative thinking of modern times is represented by such 
names as Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Leibnitz, Hume, Rousseau, Reid, 
Adam Smith, Kant, Schelling, Hamilton, Hegel, Comte, Mill and Spencer. 

Modern physics is represented by Newton, Brewster, Young, Davy, 
Faraday, Tyndall, Helmholtz, Herschell, Kirchhoff, and a multitude more. 
Modern culture, by a still greater host; such as Cowper, Byron, Words- 
worth, Coleridge, Goethe, Schiller, Tennyson, Macaulay, Carlyle, Emerson 
and Matthew Arnold. In speculative philosophy — which would seem to 
be most withdrawn from personal influences — nothing is more obvious than 
that the personal faith of each leader of thought has been a potent factor 



, 19 

in determining the range of the philosophical relations which he recognized, 
and the relative place which he assigned them in his system. The mys- 
tical skepticism of Kant; the semi-Christian pantheism of Schleermacher; 
the decorous conformity of Locke; the, keen pyrrhonism of Hume, and 
the confident and imposing agnosticism of Spencer, — reveal quite as 
much of the individual personality of each of these men as of any 
plastic energy in their environment. Of the physics of modern times 
we may say, truly, that they have been formed very largely by the per- 
vading influence of that monotheism — that Christian doctrine of a living 
and personal God which Christianity has made the faith of Europe. We 
might show, also, that aside from logic and mathematics, — which were 
the gifts of ancient thought, — our modern metaphysics and physics, our 
physiology and psychology, our ethics and politics, our jurisprudence and 
our social science, are the products of the Christian faith and of Chris- 
tian ideas. When we turn to literature, we need only ask the question. 
Where were our Dante and Milton, our Spenser and Shakespeare, our 
Scott and Coleridge, our Goethe and Schiller, our Tennyson and George 
jEHot, had there been no personal faith in the story of the supernatural 
Christ, and no kindling and unexhausted pathos in his life and death? 

More than this is true : we fearlessly assert that in every Christian 
nation in connection with every great advance in science and letters in 
modern hfe, and generally preceding it, there has been an awakening of 
religious faith and a revival of spiritual fervor, and that every such excite- 
ment has given the nation and generation a new and a more ardent intel- 
lectual life. We know, from our own observation and in our own time, that 
the moment when Christian truth takes a strong hold of any gifted soul, it 
invariably gives to what men call genius, unwonted energy of imagination 
and emotional power. Not unfrequently it works like inspiration in a soul 
reputed narrow and dull, it so increases the range and strength of its 
thinking, and kindles such new aspirations! Let but the breath of God 
at any time move a college of gifted youth to the beginnings or the 
renewal of the Christian life, — especially if the community had been aban- 
'doned to atheistic death or epicurean frivolity or selfish culture, — -and it will 



20 

reveal an intellectual energy that was before unthought of. We do not 
say that Christianit}* can of itself create or inspire genius, though, in some 
cases, it has almost seemed to do this; but we do say that, other things 
being equal, it has enormous resources of creative energy, and that for 
quickening power nothing can take its place. We assert, also, that the 
atheistic tendencies of modern science, and the frivolous but decorous 
temper of our modern culture, would effectually dry into baiTenness and 
comparative impotence the youth of any college in which they should rule, 
were it not for the counteracting influence of the healthier faith of the 
community without. This leads us to observe : — 

4. That a vigorous Christianit}'- is required in our colleges and univer- 
sities to counteract and overcome the tendencies which are active in the 
science and culture of our time. These tendencies are the natural 
outgrowth of science and culture when pursued for selfish ends, and uncon- 
trolled by the higher aims of religion and love to man. Science stimulates 
and rewards the love of power. It tasks individual effort, and rewards it 
with the pleasure of interpreting nature's secrets, of understanding her laws 
and imitating or sympathizing with her skill. So long as science recognizes 
these powers and laws as the thoughts and actings of God, so long does she 
open the gateway to worship and faith. So long as her devotee is trained to 
the docility of a little child, it is almost the same whether he knocks at the 
door of the hall of science or the door of the kingdom of heaven. But so 
soon as the investigator begins to imagine himself to be the Creator, the 
interpretations of the scientist are mistaken for the plan which was devised 
and the agent which executes. So soon as the order and unfolding of the 
plan sets aside both thinker and actor, then emerges the scientific Titanism 
of our day, which dethrones the living God in the name of that which 
enforces his right to be honored supremely by Science, as the self-existent 
thinker and self-moving force of that philosophy or that faith in which 
all science stands. 

Modern culture exalts to the highest place that which was designed to 
be the attractive servitor of duty and self-sacrifice. Culture in art and 
manners, in speech and letters, has, in the progress of comfort, wealth and 



21 

ease, become to many the chief aim of existence and the final standard of 
worth. So soon as it usurps this highest place with an individual, a chque, 
or a community, it becomes a religion — a religion that is false and idola- 
trous while it excludes the living God and disdains the self-sacrificing and 
man-loving Christ ; a religion which tests and measures the aims of life, 
the movements of society and all individual and social achievements by 
fastidious and limited standards that satisfy neither the nobler capacities 
of man nor the severer judgment of God. 

It can be no secret to the observer of our times that these antichris- 
tian tendencies are no idle fancies, but potent and formidable facts. It is 
equally clear that the arena which is most favorable for their successful 
manifestation would be a college or university, could it be cleared of all 
religious and ethical restraints. On such a field would present themselves, 
in the fairest forms, the most insidious temptations that can assail the 
noblest minds, — the love of knowledge combined with and disguised as the 
love of power, — ennobled by the aspirations of duty, and dignified by the 
associations of competition with splendid and able rivals. Here, too, culture 
would display her fascinations, — ^ confessed to be divine, if anything human 
can be,— lifting man above sensual and sordid gratifications, and needing 
neither justification nor palliation with the heart which can be touched by 
beauty or grace, whether in form or motion, in sound or color, or in the 
harmony of all. Culture in letters and speech and art also allies itself to 
science, and both exact leisure and freedom from sordid cares, while they 
promise to engross and satisfy the heart and the life. Where else can 
there be needed so much a diviner power than either, as in this very home 
of science and culture? Who can be, or bring, that power if it be not the 
Christ who has been honored by so many generations of Christian scholars, 
as they not only stand full high advanced, as inferior to none in science 
and letters, but are lustrous with that peculiar grace which is known as 
Christian — an epithet which suggests more than it defines? 

Truth compels us to add, in conclusion (5 ), that Christianity must control 
the college in order to exclude its antagonist, or rival, in the form of some 
false religion. In the present state of speculation, a university so far as it 



22 

is not positively Christian, tends toward atheism or agnosticism. One or 
two generations ago a college might more consistently and safely than 
now, dispense with religious truth and influence by simply leaving alone 
all questions of faith. If this were possible in other days, it is impossible 
now. The sciences of nature, from the molecular physics which discusses 
the mysterious ' semina remra up to those fascinating departments of nat- 
ural history which seem at first to appeal only to wonder and dehght, are 
no longer content to leave theology alone. They must now discuss questions 
and proffer theories which force their disciples to ask the great questions 
of theism, and to answer them by yes or 710. History and criticism 
challenge the student at every turn to think and say whether histor- 
ical and supernatural Christianity is any longer to be accepted by the 
reader who is abreast with the time-spirit. Ethics, politics and social 
science suppose a decisive position to be taken one side or the other in 
respect to both theism and Christianity: even elementary treatises on 
these subjects teach a positive faith or as positive a denial. Each of these 
faiths has its cultics — the ciiltus of humane and reverent sympathy with 
the great mass of men in Christendom who, after some sort, have trusted 
and hoped in the living God ; or the cidtus of the polished Pharisee, who 
plants himself at the corners of the streets and gazes at the church-going 
crowd, as he looks, if he does not speak the prayer, " O LoJ'd! I thank 
thee that I am not as other men are.''^ 

We repeat, that atheism and agnosticism are religious creeds as truly 
as are theism and dogmatic Christianity. Either can be taught directly or 
indirectly : directly, by formal and open inculcation, which, in either case, 
may defeat itself; or indirectly by gentle or sarcastic insinuation. The one 
or the other can be unconsciously taught in subtile ways of impression, 
even by an instructor who may honestly strive to withhold the slightest 
suggestion of his faith or his feelings. Each of these faiths, in the germ or 
ripened fruit, has a larger or smaller representation among pupils or 
teachers in every considerable college in this land. Holding, as we do, 
that positive Christianity is intellectually more philosophical, and morally 
more attractive, than either atheism or agnosticism, we willingly accept the 

Lore. 



23 

alternative to teach the better of these religions as earnestly and as legiti-^ 
matelj .as we may. 

As we have thus far conceived of the Christian college in the ideal, 
let us for a moment imagine one that had become thoroughly unchristian 
or antichristian, and follow out the inner and outer life of such an isolated 
and self-contained community of pupils, especially when separated from 
their homes. Such a college would have no place of common worship. 
The place where a chapel once stood has become vacant, or, if the edifice 
remains, over its portal is written, " To us there is no God, the Father 
of spirits ; and no Christ by whom we know him ; " or, perhaps, there is 
emblazoned the inscription that describes the object to which the so-called 
piety of science offers its dazed and complacent worship, "7"^ the Uiihiown 
and the Unknowable. ^^ Nor prayer nor anthem are ever heard within these 
inclosures that are consecrated, with an anchorite's rigor, to the severe aus- 
terities of a narrow intellectual insight, and of a culture to whom no sin is 
mortal except it offend against decorum. In the studies of such an institu- 
tion the fundamental unities which science presupposes must all be passed 
over, lest, forsooth, they should raise questions concerning God, and require 
answers that savor of positive religion. The philosophic range of such an 
institution must be narrow, whether it forbids us to speculate about God, or 
whether it dogmatizes that only women and priests accept a God who 
thinks and cares for men. Whether theism or agnosticism is the prevalent 
creed that is secretly cherished, each is held on narrow grounds ; for theo- 
logical declarations are not tolerated except in the form of imaginative 
flights that are admired for their suggestive imagery, or of orphic utterances 
that fit well to music. Psychology would naturally sink into physiology, 
because spirit, as usually conceived, would make God rational and even 
necessary, and would also provide for responsibility and immortality. 
Moreover, spirit has of late been pronounced by all scientific men whose 
opinions are worth considering, to be but a function of matter; and ethics, 
politics and social science are now best explained as the successive growths 
of that omnipresent and all-producing mechanism which, under the name 
of development, has not yet been branded with the title of a theological 
theory. 



24 

To appeal in defense or enforcement of any truth concerning God or 
immortality to the hopes and desires, to the aspirations and longings of 
the heart, or to the guilt and fears of the conscience, is* to commit the 
sin of sentimentalism which the intellectual tone of this house of spiritual 
death will never pardon. 

Thank God! there is no such college in this land, because the people 
in this land do not desire such for their children. Even in those insti- 
tutions upon which State necessity imposes narrow restrictions, or in 
which a secular theory strives to be logical, the Christian convictions of 
the people require that in some form or other there shall be a more or 
less positive recognition of God and duty and immortality — both the teach- 
ing of these verities as solid and trustworthy on scientific grounds, and the 
practical response to them in services of Christian worship. 

We are well aware that all our arguments and representations will be 
confronted with this comprehensive reply : " The ideal which you describe 
and defend cannot be made real. However desirable it may be to com- 
bine in the same society an ardent zeal for science and culture with fervent 
religious activities and aspirations, these elements are incompatible, or, at 
least, they cannot be provided for in the theory and practice of a numerous 
and richly-provided college or university such as our modern life impera- 
tively demands. Your ideal, and the reasons which impel to its realization, 
are against the tendencies of modern thought. The drift of modern prac- 
tice, as founded on modern experience and determined by the more 
complicated character of modern life, tends to narrow the sphere of 
Christian influences in the formal teaching and public arrangements of our 
leading colleges, and to make their internal spirit more positively secular 
and simply intellectual." That this tendency is inevitable, and that the 
drift cannot be resisted, is argued from the following reasons : — 

I . The spirit of the age requires that our investigations should be un- 
biased and unlrammeled by any traditional creeds. Whenever Christian 
doctrines or religious interests are prominently considered, investigation 
cannot be absolutely free. The fancied tendency of a theory or conclusion 
must always limit the freedom of thought and disturb the coolness of the 



25 

judgment. Science can only thrive wlien one passion is supreme, and that 
passion is devotion to the truth. ReUgious traditions and prejudices, 
whether amiable or virulent, are inconsistent with or hostile to this devotion. 
It is for this reason that science thrusts them aside, and even drives them 
out from the arena on which thought achieves its conquests. 

To which we reply: The love of truth is then acknowledged to be the 
supreme duty. Science, then, appeals to the conscience for help, and 
conscience is a religion of itself, or supposes a religion which enforces its 
behests. To the supremacy of duty, many interests and desires are opposed. 
The Christian faith is properly defined as the loving belief of Christian 
truth, because it is true. Moreover, similar passions hinder the acceptance 
of scientific and Christian truth — as the love of tradition, the pride of opinion, 
a received watchword, a name, a party or a school. The great Leader of 
the Christian Church declared : "Z<? this end was I born, mid to this end came 
I forth, that I might bear witness to the truth. Every one that is of the truth 
heareth my voice .'^ In theory, then, there is no conflict between the two 
impulses. Lord Bacon had the insight and the magnanimity to declare 
that a man must become as docile as a child if he would enter either the 
kingdom of science or the kingdom of heaven. 

We do not affirm that all Christian scientists and Christian universities 
are wholly faithful to this spirit in their search after either religious or scientific 
truth. We are quite confident that all scientists are not. But this we do 
affirm, that a Christian college is neither very enlightened nor very Christian 
which does not found its teachings on evidence; which does not give 
reasons for its opinions; which does not challenge the opponents of its 
scientific or religious creed to open combat on grounds of reason; and which 
does not confer upon its students the duty fearlessly to search for truth of 
every sort in the fear and love of God. Those who speak so contempt- 
uously of theologians as the necessary and natural antagonists of free 
inquiry and scientific progress, and argue that Christian earnestness in a 
college or university must necessarily hinder freedom of thought, do great 
dishonor to the multitudes of Christian believers, among the dead and the 
living, whose scientific researches have been of the freest and the ablest. 



26 

and for the reason that they have been conducted in a conscientious spirit 
under the eye of the Uving God. Prominent among men of this sort was 
the late Dr. Alexander Duff, who was as distinguished for missionary zeal 
as he was for the use he made of Christian institutions of learning for the 
propagation of Christianity in India. The splendid success which attended 
the Christian seminary which he opened at Calcutta, as contrasted with the 
secular schools of the government, in respect to educational and religious 
results, is an instructive example of the educational power which Chris- 
tianity possesses, and of which our American pagans might well take 
heed. I refer to him here as a fearless lover of truth of all sorts, and quote 
the words of the eminent lawyer and publicist. Sir Henry Maine : " Next 
I was struck — and here we have the point of contact between Dr. Duffs 
religious and. educational life — by his perfect faith in the harmony of truth. 
I am not aware that he ever desired the university to refuse instruction in 
any subject of knowledge because he considered it dangerous. When men 
of feeble minds or weaker faith would have shrunk from encouraging the 
study of this or that classical language because it enshrined the archives of 
some antique superstition, or would have refused to stimulate proficiency in 
this or that walk of physical science because its conclusions were supposed 
to lead to irreligious consequences, Dr. Duff, believing his own creed to 
be true, beheved, also, that he had the great characteristic of truth — that 
characteristic which nothing else except truth possesses — that it can be 
reconciled with every thing else which is also true." — The Life of Alexander 
Duff, D.D., LL.D., II. Vol., p. 393, Chap. 24. 

The sectarian spirit in theology and religion we know is sometimes 
fearfully narrowing, and most hostile to true enlightenment and progress. 
The same is true of the sectarian spirit in science, which blinds the mind 
to both facts and arguments when they make against a favorite theor}^ or 
school. The feuds and jealousies of science extend to both principles and 
men ; they control universities as truly as individuals. For this reason 
motives higher than the purely intellectual are not only useful, but often 
greatly needed, even in schools of pure science. So far as Christian motives 
are concerned, we assert with confidence that of any score or hundred 



27 

seekers after scientific truth, those who are devoutly theistic or Christian in 
their faith are, by far, the most Hkely to be fearless and open-minded in 
receiving and asserting whatever is new, provided it be true. For a Chris- 
tian believer to insinuate the opposite, is to confess the narrowness of his 
own conceptions of Christianity, or to Ubel the liberality of those of his 
neighbor. ^ 

2. It may still be urged, that in the present divided state of Christendom 
a college which is positively Christian must, in fact, be controlled by some 
religious denomination, and this must necessarily narrow and belittle its 
intellectual and emotional life. We reply, a college need not be admin- 
istered in the interests of any religious sect, even if it be controlled by it. 
We have contended at length that science and culture tend to liberalize 
sectarian narrowness. We know that Christian philosophy, history and 
literature are all eminently catholic and liberal. No class of men so 
profoundly regret the divisions of Christendom as do Christian scholars; 
and, we add, their liberality is often in proportion to their fervor. While a 
college may be, and sometimes is, a nursery of petty prejudices and a 
hiding-place for sectarian bigotry, it is untrue to all the lessons of Chris- 
tian thoughtfulness if it fails to honor its own genius, and will sooner or 
later outgrow its narrowness. 

3. It may still further be urged, that a Christian college must limit itself 
in the selection of instructors to men of positive Christian behef, and may 
thus deprive itself of the ablest instruction. We reply, no positive inferences 
of this sort can be drawn from the nature or duties of a Christian college. 
The details of administration are always controlled by wise discretion. A 
seeker after God, if he has not found rest in faith, may be even more 
devout and beheving in his influence than a fiery dogmatist or an uncom- 
promising polemic. And yet, it may be true that a teacher who is careless 
of misleading confiding youth, and who is fertile in suggestions of unbelief, 
may, for this reason and this only, be disqualified from being a safe and 
useful instructor in any college, whether Christian or secular. Personal 
characteristics very properly enter very largely into the estimate of the 
requisites in an ennobling and successful instructor; and among personal 



28 

qualities, those which we call Christian are esteemed the most ennobling, 
except by those who are ashamed of the Christian name. 

Last of all, it may be urged that a Christian college may become the 
nursery of pietistic sentimentalism or fanatical fervor. This is true ; but 
there are other sentimentalisms than those which are inspired by Christian 
truth and the Christian history; and there are other fanaticisms than such 
as flame in the Christian Church. The best security against all excesses 
of this sort is to be found in that soundness of mind which earnest Chris- 
tian devotion is fitted to inspire, when instructed by solid learning and 
enlightened by science ; when refined by imaginative literature and made 
graceful by consummate art. 

We conclude as we began — that a Christian college, to be worthy of 
its name, must be the home of enlarged knowledge and varied culture. 
It must abound in all the appliances of research and instruction. Its 
libraries and collections must be rich to affluence. Its corps of instruct- 
ors must be well trained, and enthusiastic in the work of teaching. For 
all this, money is needed, and it should be gathered into great centers — 
not wasted in scanty fountains, nor subdivided into insignificant rills! 
Into such a temple of science the Christian spirit should enter as the 
Shekinah of old, and purify and consecrate all to itself. In such a college 
the piety would inspire the science, and the culture would elevate and 
refine the piety, and the two would lift each the other upward toward God, 
and speed each other outward and onward in errands of blessing to man. 

Whether a Christian college shall surpass one that is purely or chiefly 
secular in its scientific training and literary culture, must be tested by time ; 
but in order that the test should be fair the advantages must be equal. 
The endowments, the appHances, the libraries, the museums, and all else 
that wealth can furnish, tnust be similar in attractiveness and soUdity. The 
friends of each must give to each an enthusiastic and unwavering support. 
We do not contend that religious zeal can be a substitute for scientific 
ardor; but we do urge that it may, and will, furnish the highest inspiration 
when directed to scientific studies. We are not so simple as to hold that 



29 

the culture of the religious feelings is an equivalent for the training of the 
imagination; but we do contend that the imagination, when fired by Chris- 
tian faith and fervor, has reached its. loftiest achievements. In a word, 
we believe that the Christian faith is the perfection of the human reason 
as truly as a necessity to the human heart, and, therefore, the essential to 
the highest forms of human culture. 

We conclude that no institution of higher education can attain the 
highest ideal excellence, in which the Christian faith is not exalted as 
supreme; in which its truth is not asserted with a constant fidelity, defended 
with unremitting ardor, and enforced with a fervent and devoted zeal; in 
which Christ is not honored as the inspirer of man's best affections, the 
model of man's highest excellence, and the master of all human duties. 
Let two institutions be placed side by side, with equal advantages in other 
particulars; let the one be positively Christian and the other consistently 
secular, — and the Christian will surpass the secular in the contributions 
which it will make to science and culture, and in the men which it will 
train for the service of their kind. 

If our ideal holds good for colleges in general, it emphatically applies 
to colleges for women. The indications are abundant and decisive that 
the spheres for woman's activity have already been multiplied and enlarged, 
and that in order to fill them', her education in science and letters and art 
should be made more varied and thorough. It will be agreed by most, if 
not all of us who are here present, that in order to fill these spheres of more 
public usefulness, she will not be called to part with a single one of those 
graces, each of which, in its place, and all united, make up that bond of per- 
fectness which we call true womanhood. No man who is competent to judge, 
will care to question, or venture to deny, that in every branc)i of science, 
letters and art, woman is able to achieve eminent success, and to gather rich 
enjoyment ; nor that in very many positions of administration they will equal 
men, nor that in others they will surpass them. We may not forget that in 
practical conviction, sagacious discrimination and responsive sensibility, 
they are superior to men, and by these very endowments are nearer to that 
worshiping trust which becomes religious faith so soon as the will comes 



30 

under the law of duty, and the soul is consecrated as the dwelling-place 
of God. But these special endowments of the sex expose them, perhaps 
the more, to unreasoning fanaticism and tenacious bigotry for any cause 
which they ardently espouse, be it religious, social or speculative. Hence, 
in their school and college education, with all else which gives refinement 
and culture to womanly tastes, they need the well-rooted habit of solid and 
discriminating judgment. Whatever the sphere of our educated women is 
to be, whether in the household, in society, in science, letters or art, or in 
more responsible public stations, the quality of their education will tell more 
conspicuously upon their influence. 

Shall this education be Christian? and shall women, as heretofore, be 
found generally in the ranks of faith ? It is not certain that either will 
be true. We know that not a few in England, and some in our own 
country, have become conspicuous before the public for the open abandon- 
ment of a Christian, and even a theistic belief, and for the able and ardent 
rejection of those principles on which the hope of immortality, the sacred- 
ness of the family and the solidity of society have been supposed to rest. 

We have all shuddered to read of those fanatical women who, in the 
days of the Commune, were busy in distributing among the dwellings of 
Paris the agent of destruction, and in kindling it with their own hands, 
and who justified their madness by the speculative teachings which they 
had learned from the doctrinaires of their school. Ought we to be offended 
any the less at those female expositors of the new agnosticism and ethics, 
who in our English homes play with fires even more destructive, whether 
for their own speculative delectation, or in the spirit of fanatical propa- 
gandism ? Has a gifted woman no power for mingled evil and good when, 
like George Eliot, she writes under the mingled influence of the gospel of 
hope and the gospel of despair? — much of the pathos of whose tales is the 
effect of the blended lights and shades of her earlier faith and later specu- 
lations, in the boldest of which there lingers the plaintive Christian under- 
tone which still resounds in her heart? If anything is generally agreed 
upon in respect to the higher education of women, it is that their colleges 
should be Christian homes. 



31 

The passing traveler, as he is borne quickly by this spot and catches 
sight of the gables and spires of this stately edifice, is told that it is a 
female college; and, perhaps, if it be according to the temper of its in- 
formant, he is informed that it is somewhat too religious. But what if he 
were told, and it were true, that it was atheistic or antichristian ; that it 
worshiped no god, and decorously, but scientifically, denied the name which 
all Christians hallow with the tenderest and most elevated associations ! 
We believe that this will never be said of Wellesley College. We trust 
it will never be true of any college in this land, but that each, in its way, 
and all with united energy, will honor Him before whom every knee shall 
bow and whom every tongue shall confess. 

We bring our congratulations this day to these our friends, the found- 
ers of this institution, to whose munificent gifts, followed by their never- 
ceasing thoughtfulness and prayers, this institution owes its existence, its 
prosperity and its promise. Rather do we unite with them in ascribing our 
thanks to Him from whom all just thoughts and good counsels do proceed, 
that he has enabled and inclined them to achieve this work of wise and 
sagacious benevolence. 

We congratulate its new benefactor, also, the founder of Stone Hall, 
who, after distributing so generously of her wealth for the promotion of 
higher Christian education, is permitted, this day, to crown these varied 
gifts by providing for an edifice that shall tell so effectually upon the 
Christian education of many of her own sex, who, we trust, will be ministers 
of Christian truth and Christian letters and Christian arts, and of Christ 
himself, in our country and throughout the whole earth. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



021 327 777 7 • 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



021 327 777 7 



Hollinger Corp. 
pH8.5 



